The entire point of the format is to actively make it so you are no longer pressured to proxy cuz you need thousands of dollars in cards to function at the table.

This is with the intent to make players want to actually go to their lgs and buy actual real cards, instead of ordering proxies from random companies in China.

Trying to pretend that players feeling compelled to proxy their deck isn’t inherently unhealthy for the local game ecosystem is silly.

The #1 thing LGSs want is bodies in the door. So if players are getting back into stores to buy a bunch of 50 cent cards, they probably are also supporting the LGS in other ways inherently.

The current casual meta of 5 people sitting down and all of them pulling out proxied decks directly means 5 less instances of people actively walking into their LGS to shop.

You can say what you want but as someone friends with LGS owners, I can definitely say the chilling effect of proxying on the casual economy has been very noticeable. The market for casual cards has heavily dried up.

Tonnes of people take the next step of “well if I am proxying 10 cards why not proxy all 100 who cares”

Shops demand for cheap staples dries up.

Shops stop buying cheap staples bulk cuz they arent selling.

Non proxy’ing players can’t find their cards that need… so they guve up and turn to proxying too

You can see how that feedback loop is unhealthy, right? Thus here I am, promoting a format that aims to counter this feedback loop and try and inject health back into the local casual tabletop ecosystem

So yeah, if you proxy in the aforementioned format, you are not playing in the “spirit” of it.

Commander is by far the most popular format for many good reasons.

I however am not a fan of some recent sets design wise. Bloomburrow was peak though, and felt like a return to a more classic mtg experience.

Personally I’m a fan of budget commander, where it’s still commander with these 3 deck building rules:

1. Your total deck price l, if you price it online, cannot exceed $70 USD

2. You cannot play any cards that have ever been banned in any mainstream constructive format (discluding rarity based formats like pauper)

3. Proxies are not allowed, as it goes against the spirit of this format

The core spirit is “stop feeling compelled to proxy shit, support your LGS!”

API is just the term for “the surface of something that’s been exposed to you to interact with”

Libraries, websites, tools, etc all have APIs, it’s just the general term for “this thing has something we can interface with”

A library is a bunch of code someone else wrote.

A package is when you use a tool to bundle up a library to make it easier to distribute to other people, usually adding a version # to it, and adding it to so.e popular package manager network so millions of people can find your package easier.

A framework is a term for a very big cohesive library, with an advanced api, that does a whole bunch of different things that all have stuff in common. Basically a firework is a huge library that provides many many different things to do that all have stuff in common.

Game Engines for example are frameworks.

A library of tools to make a bunch of different website components that all work well together and have stuff in common is a framework.

Etc etc. It’s a bunch of code that doesn’t do anything in it’s own, but provides a bunch of modular pieces you can assemble into something.

Think of a framework like buying a big box of lego. It’s not anything specific yet, but you can assemble all those pieces together to make infinite different things.

I think at it’s core this is deeply rooted in a fear of death/disability

People offer unhelpful platitudes because deep down they know that they can also one day get some kind of diagnoses for an illness. Cancer, dementia, alzheimers, you name it.

It’s coming for all of us.

So when they ask “did you try x???” It’s them really saying “god please let miracle cures still exist, I can’t handle confronting my own mortality”

And if you go “no, I havent tried that yet”, they get to smile and proceed in life, “oh well if I was sick, I’d try everything!”

Which is pretty much all that seperates them, for now, from acknowledging the void they just brushed up against.

Some people would rather very carefully arrange a thin sheet covering the giant black pit in the middle of their living room, so they never have to look at it.